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.G18 118 
1823 
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Yet not unconscious what a doubtful task 
To paint the finest features of the mind, 
And to most subtle and mysterious things 
Give colour, strength, and motion. 

AKENSIDE. 



BY ARTHUR GENIO, ESQ, 



^..•*»..<"«M«"S.»^- 



NEW-yORK 



PRINTED BY S. MARKS, FOR THE AUTHOI 



1823. 



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I HAVE written somewhat heretofore with a sincere 
desire to please fastidious critics, and a busy public ; 
but not finding it marvellously easy to discompose the 
rigid and inflexible gravity of their risible muscles any 
farther than a bitter, intolerable sneer would have a 
tendency to effect it — I have WTitten the following ex- 
clusively for my own gratification and pleasure — ne phis 
ultra. 

New- York, Augtist 25, 1828. 



i 



75 '/72 J 



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'TwAs Midnight — that unbroken hour of deep 
Unearthly meditation, in which thought 
Soars on wide-wandering wing, and laps the soul 
In visionary spells of potent energy, 
Enrobing dim ideas with magic charms. 
And bodying wild conception's formless shades 
In widely-varied beauty and fiend-like 
Deformity ; and aloft I stood alone 
On the dark verge of a wild beetling clifT, 
Hanging in sombre grandeur o'er the dells 
Unlighted since the viewless hand of heaven 
Piled those impending precipices o'er 
The emerald vale below\ How reels the sense 
When upward gazing on the giddy heights! 
How swims the eye in dizziness ! — The rock 
Flung its dark shadow on the bubbling foam 
Of an immeasurable w^orld of waters, 
That lash'd the frowning battlement of nature 
In unintermitting, and vain-wreak'd ire, 
Till, pealing in terrific echoes, far 
Rung the wild shock of warring waves in notes 
Deep-toned, but sinking as o'er lawn, and lea. 



4 ' A VISION. 

Mountain, and wilderness, they sped awaj, 

Waking the slumbering monarch of the wood 

From his cloud-canopied lair in forest dense, 

And on the sable shadows of Ihe night 

Turning his enkindling balls of vivid flame, 

That seem to human eye like vice and crime 

Pouring their lava flood upon a world, 

That once was Eden — and upon a soul, 

That once was innocent — not now, alas! 

Phosphoric streams of liquid light had tipt 

The billowy ocean's foamy cresis, and drawn 

Haloes of living fire around the dim 

And dusky horizon — bejond the ken 

Of all, save star-like vision looking down 

On earth from heaven's blue-arch'd battlements sublime. 

Amid the wild concussion of the waves 

Swelling and warring, like the vassal mass 

Led by Ambition — that fierce god of dupes 

And despots shaking pestilence around 

From his gore-clotted locks — an islet lay 

In still and smiling loveliness, array'd 

In the bright summer's garb of velvet green 

Festoon'd by branching woodbines, that were gay 

With the exuberance of being — crown'd 

AVith emerald set in violet amelhjst. 

It lay so peacefully — and was so sweet 

And lone asylum for a broken heart, 

Methought it seemed like virtue, on the earth 

A wanderer, doomed to bear her starry brow, 

Stamp'd with the impress of unerring love, 

Amid the battling rage of sin and folly; 

Or Innocence seated on the sepulchre 

Of hope departed — smiling yet — but like 

The smiles upon the cold, damp, bro'fV of Death. 



A VISION. 

In strange varieties of fantastic forms 

Hung the last vestiges of sable clouds, 

That curtain'd, when the unseen sun had sunk 

Behind the skirting hills of Ripton, far 

Swelling on the mariner's eagle eje, as o'er 

The light blue wave, that laves Long-Island's shore, 

His bark careering flies, the sombre skj 

Sleeping so deadly on the mountain height. 

Darkness yet lingered in their mazy folds 

Of fleecy vapours, as foul sin infests 

The last sad hour of low mortality, 

E'en till the soul hath left her dungeon clay; 

But the bright moon, that rose serenely o'er 

The rain-dropp'd canopy of umbrag'd woods. 

Sleeping in momentary beauty on 

The mimic lake within the woodbine's bell, 

Then blending with the sapphire floods on high, 

And radiating the starry robe of night 

With mellow lustre, stealing on the sonl 

Of wandering melancholy minstrel, call'd 

By nature to nocturnal orisons — 

The bright moon's beams lay on the topmost height 

Of those erratic clouds, and as they fell 

Commingling with the inky-tinctured spots. 

That soiled the jewelled vestments of high heaven, 

Like staining crime on godlike imaged man, 

Lone musing melancholy sung — so hope. 

Faith, breathing aspirations unto heaven, 

Love — purest essence of ethereal thought — 

Pleasure, bliss, rapture in this lowly world 

Are all corrupted, mildewed, blighted, dead 

Beneath the nightshade's withering gloom, that lies 

In massive folds upon the catacomb 

Of a creation once so purely bright. — • 



A VISION. 

The holiest impulse of created mind 
Is so commingled with the base and low 
Texture of earth engendered feelings that, 
Amid the wildering labyrinth of mind, 
The semblance of a Cynosure may flash, 
Flinging its fiery atoms round his path. 
Portend the issue terrible, and burst — 
The blasting, ruining meteor of death; 
Luring the soul by fairy seeming, like 
Destruction's harbinger — the false mirage — 
To the dark haunts of tearless agony. 

Above me waved a giant oak, whose boughs, 
Loaded with hoary festoons, like the locks 
Of fiery spirited veteran, undecayed. 
Spread from the gnarled trunk, that stood aloft 
Unbending to the wild autumnal blast. 
Unshorn, unblenching, and unsheltered — proud 
Towering in venerable majesty on high — 
O how unlike the fabrics of vain man ! 
His gorgeous domes, and palaces o'er-canopied 
With fretted gold, as bubbles on the rill, 
As fairy frost-work in the sun, decay 
With the proud arm that rear'd them — ruin'd fall 
Prostrate — in homage to their slumbering tenant? 
Nof in mockery of fancied immortality; 
And sapient eye of virtuoso may 
Roam o'er the mouldering mansions of the dead, 
And treasure up his relics — peasant's tools! 
Philosophy may scan the pyramid 
And obelisk — and think on times gone by — 
Pomp, power, factions, revolutions, blood, 
Massacre, and desolation — but the voice 
Of research seeking long-forgotten names 



A VISION. 

Of warriors, sages, bards, and sybils, comes 
Back o'er their buried memories indistinct, 
Like hollow murmurings of discontent, 
Seeming to say — nothing — but Oblivion. 
Here everlasting silence broods, nor opes 
Her closed lip to tell the passer-by 
That crested heroes o'er the crimson tide 
Of wasted blood — Oh ! demon-circled carnage ! 
Wafted by groans and cries of widowhood, 
Sailed madly down the Lethean gulf — and left 
The croaking bittern sounding their requiem ! 

The oak's long branches on the fanning gale 
Tost their green platted foliage ; and faint 
The fuU-orb'd moon gleam'd through the density 
Of leafy umbrage, like the trembling light 
Of days dimly remembered, and only seen 
Duskily, amid the twilight of the soul. 
Through the entangled vista of the yew 
And cypress, leading to the sepulchre 
Of buried love, and slumbering passion — gone I 

Through the unhallowed mazes of the wood, 
That gloomed behind me, vision keen and bright 
Could never pierce — a haunted solitude — 
It lay in darkness palpable^ yet formless — 
And night-born furies yelling o'er it flapt 
Their raven wings the while their snaky hair, 
Coiling and curling to the breath of night. 
Streamed like an infernal standard, all unfurl'd 
And planted by the ebon throne of hell. 
And from the midst came hollow mutterings, 
Like earthquake voices deep, foreboding doom, 
And agonizing Horror, writh'd and tortur'd, strained 



8 A VISION. 

His bursting, blood-shot eye-balls through the gloom 
Cimmerian to gaze ; — but strained in vain, 
For earthly fiends incarnate, mangling, rent 
His heart with venom fangs, and harrowed up 
His soul with flickering beams of distant light, 
That glittered to delude the vision ; — then 
In wild distortions of grimace, and leers 
Of hate luxuriated on him turned 
In pity's life subduing mockeries. 

The lovely, deep blue vault of circling heaven 
In beauty placid o'er me hung, like the eye 
Of deep impassioned lover o'er the form 
Of innocent loveliness — his soul's delight 
And mirror — the ideal shade, that haunts 
His airy and aerial dreams, when soft 
And dew-robed sleep with downy trembling step, 
Leaving her foot-prints only on the train 
Of her majestic sweeping goddess — Night, 
Flings her embalming vestments o'er his lids, 
That close like dying infant's laid upon 
The cradling bosom of its mother. — Tranced,, 
And wrapt in lofty meditation, o'er 
The undisturbed and smiling sky I gazed 
Seeking some quiet, peaceful isle amid 
That boundless ocean of pure emerald, 
And musing that among the myrtle groves. 
And bedded flowers, and by the blushing banks 
Of Life's eternal stream of deathless love, 
I might view her in whom my earth-bound soul 
Delighted — her I did idolatrize ; 
Wishing most fondly, most devotedly, 
That I was but a winged spirit, borne 
On star-gemm'd pinions through those azure fields 



A VISION. 9 

So fitting spliere-born souls — all bodiless — 
All passionless, unpolluted, and exempt 
From the dark scepticism, and blots of earth — 
That I might drink the music floating pure 
Down from the seraph-cinctured throne of God 
To jon bright spheres, forever lighted by 
The beams of thought electric, and might live 
Uncloyed by deathless rapture — all unstained 
By contact with the living clay below, 
Untouched by thing of mortal mould— 'unknown 
Save to the Omniscient, his angelic train, 
And sainted spirits purified. Oh ! and there, 
Perchance, amid the Eden bowers of light, 
O'er-canopied with amaranthine flowers 
Living and blossoming in angel-smiles, 
And dewed with tears of pearl, that trembling steal 
Unbidden, and involuntary o'er 
The alabaster cheek of cherubim, as they 
Dash screaming felons down the black abyss 
Of hopeless, starless^ bottomless perdition; — 
Perchance that there, where sin comes not in pride 
Ushering her scorpion-vestured daughter — Woe — 
And she leading Despair — in joy again 
My long-departed parent's form might burst 
On Rapture's eye — Oh ! he in bliss was wont 
To kiss my cloudless brow in infancy, 
Press my young lips to his, and fondly tell 
Of future days, when my fair brow would glow 
With vivifying thought, and those young lips 
Impart the words of truth, and eloquence, 
Stirring the dormant souls of human-kind 
To deeds of mercy, gentleness, and truth. 
His soul w as like the Halcyon, when she sit« 
Smiling upon the mimic throne of glass 

B 



10 A VISION, 

Amid the boundlessness of her fair world 

Sleeping in sliilj quietude around her; 

Her peacock pinions spread upon the wave, 

That swells so gentlj, that she feels her soft 

And rainbow plumage ruffled not — her eye 

Watching the sportive inmates of the deep 

As thej in joyous evolutions skim 

Along the crystal plain of waters — full 

Of innocent, and exuberant glee ; 

While, past all melody of land and grove, 

Her song swells o'er the wave in tones so sweet. 

So musical, and heaven-taught, (hat the wide plain 

Seems spread with fretted canopies of gold, 

For sun-beams flash from amber scales, and Silence 

Lifts up her head in wonder to imbibe 

Those heart-embalming sounds; even the fierce 

Leviathan seems to slumber oh the wave; — 

This may not be — the dolphin whirls away — the sky 

Is curtained with dark clouds — the sun retires — 

Flashes the lightning — heaves the ocean — far 

Beyond the ken of mortal flies the Bird. 

So grief hath darkened o'er my soul . . . yet he 

Did never — holy thought ! behold the lines 

Of furrowing woe, that mark the glowing brow 

Once hallowed by his kisses . . . never saw 

The writhing of my tortured soul^ — nor heard 

The demon voice of imprecation pour 

Its fearful curses on my head ; — Oh bliss ! 

And I could meet his soul-lit glance again, 

Nor ruin heaven by telling him a tale, 

At which Arch-Lucifer would shrink and shudder. 

And there's another ; she, who smiled so sweet 
That heaven seemed dwelling in her soft blue eye, 



A VISION. 11 

And tuning every fibre of her heart 

To the unheard, but not unfelt, and pure 

Music of the sinless soul ; she, who rose 

On high, by glittering seraph pinions borne, 

From the remorseless bosom of her own 

Unspotted purity. Hail, thou charm ! thou dear 

Returning vision of departed years ! 

Thou peerless image of celestial joys ! 

How calm and beautiful in death thou wert ! 

In life enchanting — in heaven — v/hat ? Delight 

Dwells in the deepest core of my fond heart. 

Exults in every feverish pulse — bedims 

The vision — wraps each sense in lethargy 

And mocks all utterance. — Fond Friendship, such 

As lives in bosoms unallled to earth, 

Intensely gazes on yon pictured fields. 

Too lovely and too pure to canopy 

That strange commixture of base clay, and half 

The attributes of Deity — that bright 

Mirror, reflecting equally the forms 

Of seraphim and fiends-r-that vassal dupe 

Of glittering shapes, and high criterion 

Of energy and dignity — the slave 

Of passion, and the conqueror of the world — 

Man ! most complex mystery of created kind — 

Devoted Friendship gazes to behold. 

And revel in its view of Cranston — fled 

From the idolatry of an earthly church 

To worship heaven's bright Hierarch — and lead 

His soaring saints to glory. Oh ! he was 

The shielding JEgis of my youth ; he sunk 

E'en in his lovely prime into the tomb. 

Departing in his native light of love. 

And leaving darkness on my lonely mind. 



12 ^ A VISION. 

But could I soar to jon fair fields, his eye 

Would mark his unforgotten youthful friend, and fix 

On me again the glances of his soul. 

Wrapt in this reverie of visioned bliss. 
This rare communion with ethereal shades 
Stealing unconsciously upon the mind, 
That loves no earthly musings, such as cheer 
The maudlin brains of plodding brutes, who delve 
For fancied heaps of tinsel dust unseen 
By avarice upon the ground he treads — 
I saw, melhought, a vestment purely while 
Floating athwart the starry galaxy, 
Like spirits ministrant in holy days. 
When Heaven seemed clasping Earth unto her breast, 
Flinging their stainless robes before the eyes. 
That saw the cherub-thron'd Shechinah blaze 
Above the seat of Mercy, on whose ear 
Came the sad voice of Penitence so soft 
And melting, that she raised her touching glance 
Upon dark-brow'd inexorable Justice, 
Whose mandate terrible had shrunk the soul 
To endless death but for the trembling hand, 
That showered absolution — Oh! long-lost days! 
'Twas passing spirit-like — and then 'twas gone — 
Like shadowy visions of delight — or like 
The beautifullest hues of dancing Eve 
Upon the sun-bright wave — as fair, more fleeting — 
It passed no more — and then I thought that so 
Fancy doth deck ephemeras, and all 
The wild chimeras of gay fluttering Hope, 
To cheer the dull, dead scenes of human life, 
Being's asperities, and satiety; 
And they do cheer — and so doth that bright Lake, 



A VISION. 1.3 

Shining, like Ormus' pearly waters, on 
The toil-worn wanderer's rapture-kindling eye, 
As it hangs its crystal beauties on the far 
And fleeting horizon — O mockery! 

"While Melancholy mused there came above me, 
Arching ihe lonely, solitary cliff, 
A rainbow, dyed in heaven's own fountains, girt 
With bright diamond wings, and crown'd aloft 
With my own lovely Marietta — she. 
Whose every thought, and wish, and hope sublime 
From Paradise did flow — and she did love me ! 
Absorbing transport thrill'd my frame — and then 
O'er-wrought raplure sunk to lethargy ; I felt 
The incommunicable bliss of being — 
Into those minutes came the joys, that will, 
That must exist through ages numberless 
In that celestial Land of Souls, where all, 
Oh Bliss ! is thought, and mind ! Full well I knew 
The being of untainted purity. 
And she did smile upon me as in days, 
When she was wont to turn her azure eye, 
In which delighted Love and Beauty shone, 
On the dear object of her inmost soul. 
And now she came in airy lightness — sweet, 
And purer than the dew-drop in the violet ; 
Ay — like that eastern flower, that cannot bloom 
Upon this lowly sphere : — a coronet 
Of jewels flung its countless-varied rays 
O'er all her tresses murmuring in the breeze, 
And sending forth the only sound, that came 
From ought around her — she was voiceless — Oh ! 
Music would have lapt my very soul, if once 
My fond ear could have drank her foot- step's sound. 



14 A VISION. 

Her eye was bright, but it had lost the power 

Of the unbosoming glance, that lovers know — 

Th?Li filial lovers know — and yet a smile 

Imbued its dwelling vision, and impress'd 

The love-fraught bosom with a strange, a deep, 

And undefinable delight — 't was more 

Than can be felt by tenderest hearts, when lips 

Meeting in speechless transport drink the soul, 

And bear away the existence of each other ; 

'Twas more than earth can give, or take — and none 

Of those aerial essences impart 

The secrets of Eternity. — There was 

A soul-absorbing, dove-like tenderness 

Around her : — and she did look upon my form 

With such a breathing melancholy eye. 

As the Sultana, that bright-plumaged Bird 

Perch'd on the monuments of departed greatness, 

Throws o'er the ruins desolate around her. 

Along the spheres, and redolent of heaven, 

Came angel breathings — music exquisite — 

Felt, but inexpressible, loud, but such 

As sounds within the palace of the soul 

When it is tuned to faint responses ; she 

At that soul-stirring sound her pinions waved, 

As if for flight to yon empyreal heights — 

But still delayed — I knew not why — yet thought > 

There was a strange concussion in my breast — 

A breathless, unknown, feeling — such as ne'er 

Came over me before — a wilderment 

Of ideas tangled; Earth did seem to me 

Not as it wont — there was a veil o'er things, 

That shadowed them before my swimming" eye, 

And nature lay around me in a cloud 

Of dim and waning lustre, like the last 



A VISION. 15 

Faint beauties of expiring Day upon 

The sapphire clouds of even ; — all was chang'd, 

Or changing I knew not how — and I lay 

Unconscious of all things that charmed me once, 

Save that bright spirit's holy smile — for now 

She bent o'er me, seeming robed in a garb 

Spangled with glories — and she seem'd to take 

My hand in hers and say — mortal may not 

Descant upon a fair immortal's words, 

Nor tell them ; — Eden's language never came 

Glowing from fallen, sinful, erring man. 

But one among them was the spell-word, known 

To forms and beings bodiless on high 

Alone; it pass'd her colourless lips, and flew 

Along the smiling concave — and it seem'd 

She rose, and I was striving to arouse 

From that lethargic torpor, which had steeped 

External sense in Lethe, and infused 

A deadly chill into my curdling blood. 

When, like the Volcan's voice along the red 

Torrent of lava bursting down his height, 

Came hollow mutterings, and the yelling shades 

Of Evil whirled from that unlit Profound 

Beyond the cliiF in massive phalanxes. 

Wielding above infernal weapons, and aloft. 

Below, around encircling me with snakes 

Of venom' d fangs, and forked tongues, that fill'd 

The welkin with their hissings, and fierce fires, 

Like wild Sahara's, all around me roll'd 

In volum'd masses broad, enkindling all 

The scenery, and withering every shrub, 

And living thing, save enfranchised spirits pure, 

Unto a hue of haggard ghastliness ; 

Then came terrific shouts of laughter, like 



16 A VISION. 

The gladness of the Demon of the Waste, 

O'er the triumphal minstrelsy of hell 

Played by those lost, abandoned Ariels, who wont 

By their rich tones to lead on seraphim 

Through heaven's gem-barr'd portals, and now were cursed 

With notes, that once were pure and holy, fraught 

With trebly damning recollections dire. 

Now wheeling on their wings of darkness, fired 

With torch-like and sulphureous blaze, they came, 

Like that high pillar'd banner raised above 

The watery battlement of eastern climes. 

Coloured on one side with the dies of heaven. 

While blackness rob'd the other ; — but — I looked, 

And saw the sky in peaceful loveliness 

Encircling me like angel-smiles around 

The beauteous new-born babe ; I looked again ; 

And saw a shadow of celestial air 

Treading the fields of amber — and I felt 

A gentle rising — nectared breezes fann'd 

My fevered cheek, unearthly beauties glowed 

O'er all the embosoming heaven on high — 

A smile ethereal tinged with rosy hues 

My lovely spirit's brow, and cheek, and eye, 

And turning on me, as a golden blaze 

Of light falls on a summer cloud, she said — 

Oh ! that enchanting voice so musical ! 

"My Brother, look!" I raised my downcast eye 

And gazed, till all my soul became a fount 

Of light — and perfume, bliss and gilead — 

Delighted Hope her starry pinions furl'd, 

And gently sunk upon Fruition's breast. 



There was a Voice — 'tis silent now, and ne'er 
Will blend its music with my soul again, 
For on the living loneliness of mind 
It comes not — ah ! its lengthening echo comes, 
When love-lorn fantasies of viewless things 
Hold runic empire in my whirling brain, 
And deep communion with the gliding shades 
Of long-lost, dim-remembered hours imbues 
The soul with pageantry aerial, 
And wraps external sense in witchery — 
Like the low wailings of a wild-voiced dirge 
By airy phantoms chanted in the hour 
Of dark-brow'd Midnight, when aloft she lifts 
Her hooded head, and shakes her sable locks, 
Wild waving o'er the shaggy mountain top, 
Upon the dim-starr'd firmament — to hear 
The intonated requiem^ — and smile 
In soul-subduing, bitter Mockery. 
That echo — not responsive to the strain 
Of spirit-stirring joy — but the deep wail 
Of hope departed, not deferr'd — the sad. 
Heart-breaking chorus of a last farewell, 

C 



IS THE VOICE. 

That plain'd along the craggy, toppling heights 
O'erhanging Housalonic's rivulet, 
AVhen Dian — love's true oracle — on high 
Shone dimly; darkness on that hour of woe, 
Like death's funereal pall of blackness, hangs, 
While Memory recoils — yet loves to trace 
The inildew'd beauties of a blighted flower, 
And catch from hues faded long since a ray 
Of unforgotten, but decayed delight; — 
Thus man — the deepest mystery of earth — 
Wantons in retrospective parted bliss 
To swell the tide of present agony. 

But to the Voice. — It was the Voice of Love — 
But is not now — nor ever more can be. 
Ellen — (hat name sounds like the mermaid's song 
"Most musical, most melancholy!" — and wakes 
Emotions unintelligible and dread — 
Our meeting, Ellen, in that hamlet lone, 
Was like the mingling of symphonious sounds 
O'er distant moonlight-waters rising sweet, 
Embalmijig every soul, that drinks the music; — 
Like the rich evening sunbeam on the arch 
Of countless hues, that spans the skies, and flings 
Its native charms — how beautiful ! around. 
Drawn forth, and heightened by the solar rays; 
'Twas like the fond concurrence of two spirits 
In their own Eden musing on the joys. 
That dwell within, when every holy thought. 
Tuning the music of their souls, comes not 
Into the mind of either, until form'd, 
And moulded to the purest taste of each. 
'Twas pure and lovely — Oh! the scene appears, 
Tiike an Oasis in the bloomless waste. 



THE VOICE. 19 

A glowing star upon (he darkling bruw 
Of dewy-vestured Night — an Eden laid 
On the fiend-haunted banks of Phlegethon! 

Dost thou remember — no thou wilt not now — 

For 'twas a pageant only — Ihou wilt say — 

The fluttering maiden's evanescent hour 

Of sportive triumph o'er a bleeding heart, 

The licensed mockery of beauty — well 

It might have been (he Fancy's waking dream, 

(And in that wild, sequestered, lonely wood 

The poet well might shadow forth a form 

Of lovely air, and wake (he voice of Love 

From the imaginings of his own brain, 

And paint a fondly dwelling, speaking eye 

From the intensity of wildering thought) 

It might have been a shade — or nothing — yet 

Such as it was — the memory scans each line. 

Each feature, blush, and smile of (hat sweet face — 

Dull is the minstrel if he cannot sketch 

A scene, that thrall'd each raptur'd sense, and woke 

Passions undying, thrilling, and intense. 

Crescented Cynthia, methought, along 

The deep-blue sapphire element of pure 

And liquid ether held her cloudless course, 

And flung her soft liquescent beams o'er mead, 

Lawn, grove, and glassy stream, and wood-crown'd hill; 

And I pass'd o'er the high-arch'd bridge — that might 

A designation from its scenes receive. 

And then be call'd — *' The Bridge of Sighs" — for there 

Full many a sigh arose, and many a tear 

Of bitter grief descended ; so 1 trod 

With pensive, lingering, melancholy step. 

Gazing at intervals upon the mooo- 



20 THE VOICE. 

The nightly-vvamlering poet's Deity — 

And musing that her chastened light was cold 

As human hearts and human friendships — all 

Moving by one grand chord — base interest — 

I strove to lift ray hand that I might vow 

Never to mingle with the venal herd 

Of sordid sensualists — ne'er to wear 

A smile upon mj brow while rancour fired 

My heart — but then I felt a pressure soft 

Upon ray bent right arm, and turn'd my eye 

On — the sweet smiling face of Ellen ; — she, 

In love's fond glances past all eloquence, 

Threw on me such a look ineffable. 

So full of holiest, and intensest love, 

Mingled with sadness inexpressible, 

And every throb of her convulsed heart 

Confirm'd the language of her eyes so true, 

That manhood's feelings, uncontroul'd when night 

Had laid her leaden fingers on the lids 

Of vampire curiosity, burst forth 

In a wild chaos of untextured words. 

That had no meaning to the soulless hind ; 

Then came the voice — I heard it now — as o'er 

The wave of gulfing Time it comes, no more 

Soft and mellifluent as wont, but harsh 

As felon's death-knell o'er his dungeon-vault ; 

But then it fell upon me as the dew 

Falls on the sun-scorch'd violet, and stole 

Into my very being, telling Love 

That truth ejected from the world beside 

Will find a hermitage in woman's breast, 

That Ida's summit can attest the bliss, 

And wild Leucadia the agony 

Of fix'd, immovable, unearthly souls. 



THE VOIGE. SI 

In fond communion, thus, of hearts we pass'd 

Through the dim vista of the maple grove, 

And 'neath the canopy of rustling leaves, 

(Where zephyr still wooed echo to respond 

His music indistinct with her soft voice. 

Though she long since had sought the pole, and cheer'd 

The icy soul of Boreas with song,) 

Upon a mossy stone we seated us, 

While, chiming on its pebbly bed, the stream, 

A mirror in the midst of frowning woods. 

Like youth and virtue in a world of vice, 

Purled gently, imperceptibly along. 

As sainted spirits o'er empyreal bowers ; 

Peaceful and stainless, happ_y and serene. 

Around my neck she threw her lily arm, 

And, in a speechless ecstacy of Love, 

Reclined her head upon a throbbing breast 

Doom'd ne'er to be her pillow ; every kiss, 

The very essence of enchanted souls. 

Given and answered, while her snowy cheek 

Was all carnation'd with deep blushes, came 

From the recesses of an heavenly heart. 

And with it carried heaven ! 

Intense and high 
Swell pain and pleasure in the loftier mind ; 
The stoic hardihood of iron nerves 
May pass in dull monotony, unknown 
To mortal woe, — to joys alike unknown. 
I pity and commiserate the man, 
With whom life's sorrows are poetic tales, 
And Love — the glowing Cynosure of heaven, 
The brightest gem in Deity's bright crown — 
A mocking by-word — rustic jest — or taunt 



22 THE VOICE. ' 

Of base fa(uity — such lowlj thoughts 
Are fitting earth — and demons. 

The silver moon 
Now glimmered faintly through the rolling racky 
That circled her, and forked fierj bolts 
Flew rapidlj along the welkin dark, 
And distant thunder burst, (he wild wind then, 
Threw, as the fierce furies their scorpion hair 
O'er the Avernian gulf, the sable clouds 
O'er the fair face of heaven ; the dusky grove 
In omened voices spake, and echoes loud 

Answered the whirlwind's herald : a faint shriek. 

That seemed to say — farewell — I heard — and gazed 

Around on lone vacuity — my thoughts 

Wild as the tempest raged — Oh ! she had gone ! 

Death to my hopes, and joys, and love, and fame 

Came on that blast of Desolation ! — Now 

Be it the Fancy's vision — one can tell — 

Or be it grief delineating truth, 

That Voice upon the ear of Memory 

Rings like the boding death-watch of Despair. 



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